Forgetting names, confusing faces

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I thought I had a problem with face blindness, because although I don't tend to forget someone's face again once I have 'learned' it, it takes me a long time to learn it. I usually have to meet with a new person a dozen times or more before I'll start to recognize them when I see them again, and even then, if I see them in an unexpected location, I can still be thrown.

However, I don't have any problem with remembering and recognizing people on TV - in fact, I'd go so far as to say I'm considerably better at it than some. Therefore I've come to the conclusion that I don't actually have any problem with remembering faces in themselves, but when I meet a person in real life and have to interact with them, so much mental energy is having to be devoted to concentrating on the interaction - trying not to miss or misinterpret anything they say, trying to put my own words into order to reply, trying to remember any information they give me - that there's just not very much left over for details such as visual appearance. I can feel in my brain that I'm not registering them on a deep enough level and I'm not going to remember them. When I'm simply able to observe someone, on the other hand, and even a threat of having to possibly interact with them doesn't exist, I have the concentration free to take in those details.

Last edited by Hovis on 06 Feb 2009, 3:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

Losing face topic

I am trying to learn how to link the face with the name--so far the only luck is with famous people, as they are seen more than once a week (eg, Barack Obama).

I have confused one face for another, and then felt almost embarrassed.

Often I do forget names. Faces can be a problem too, especially when watching new movies as it can be hard to remember which character is which.

I am so glad I asked the question. I thought there was something really wrong with me, and now I know it's pretty common with people on the spectrum. I did take an on line test to see if I had facial blindness, and it appears I don't. In fact, I was shocked to see that I got a really good score because it is such a problem for me. I keep reading your posts and going, "Yeah! That's exactly like me!" I do remember faces of TV people, I do mix up people I know and totally forget people I spend a good deal of time with, and I do have to spend a lot of time with someone before I can remember what they look like. I also really understand the poster who doesn't know people out of context, but gets a feeling that they must know them. I do that ALL...THE...TIME! I will see someone in the store and know that I should know her, get a vision of her in a white uniform and a feeling that I think I like her, and then some time later will remember that she is my dentist's assistant.

To hear that others are just like me makes me feel really good.

I'd like to share my prosopagnosia experience.

A few days ago, I was in a really stressful situation, and an acquaintance that I saw daily for months happened to approach me from a great distance. I hadn't seen him in about 2 months.

From far off something in my brain clicked and I knew that this person knew me. Nothing else registered though. It was only after i'd said hello and exchanged pleasantries that I placed his face, and I suppressed the urge to pull a face of my own - one which said "Oh! Thats who you are!"

I still could not recall his name. The name that i'd used daily for months. 10 minutes after we parted I remembered it. At the time I figured that anxiety played an important part.

Today I was driving in a relaxed state of mind and saw someone else at a great distance and knew everything about them. So for me, the more relaxed my mind is, the better i'm able to access my face database. Or to use an imaginative term that i've just this moment invented... my Facebook.

A more recent development for me is misreading a face and thinking its someone close to me. Thankfully it only lasts moments, not long enough for me to embarrass myself.

It takes me longer than others to remember faces.

I'm not very good at names, but I don't find them as difficult as faces. It's partly a fear of using their name but getting it wrong.

I also have trouble with both names and faces, and have been in some embarrassing situations because of this. (Like introducing myself to someone twice, within a short time...and they say "we´ve met, we just had a long conversation"! This isn´t always a problem though, sometimes I do remember someone well because they are distinctive in some way. And once I really know someone very well, and they are part of my life, then I do remember them, although I have been known to temporarily forget someone´s name.

People come up to me all the time, call me by name and seem to know a lot about me, and I´m thinking "who the f- is this person?" I´ve learned to just keep talking, act like I know them and not say certain things that would give it away. I also have trouble sometimes with people out of context.

Here is another problem I´ve noticed recently. Sometimes, I´ll ask my students if someone is missing, and they´ll say the name of one of the students, like "Marie". Now, when Marie is standing right there in the class I know exactly who she is, and I know her face very well because she´s been my student all year, I see her 4 days a week. But when she´s not there, and the others say "Marie is missing", I draw a total blank...I can´t for the life of me think who she is! What´s worse is that my students notice that I´m blank, so they say "Marie, Marie!" But this doesn´t help me remember her. I have no idea if this is due to autism, or stupidity- I´ve never heard of someone else having this problem before.

I also have the same face blindness with famous people. I can get confused with characters in movies, which makes it awfully hard to follow the plot at times. I still get Ben Stiller and Ben Affleck confused with each other, because they are both named Ben, have brown hair and look sort of alike, to me, at least.

This became a running joke in college. I lived with guys for years that I know everything about, and yet still cannot put a name on.

If I see you out of context or you change your hair, I likely won't be able to recognize you.

I do have a very hard time remembering names... I've been living on university campus for about 1 1/2 months now, but still only know very, very few names. But if I get to know some people, I don't forget their name that fast again.

My face recognition is something that I usually thought to be relatively good... but then again, befor I went to England my mother had a very serious talk to me.
She told me how it can upset people very much if they greet me and I don't greet back, or even obviously ignore them. Up to then I knew that sometimes I don't notice people greeting me on the street, but I wasn't aware that I had noticed people greeting me and ignored them... or that I had ever ignored people whom I knew (or who knew me and whom I was supposed to know).

Had the same problem. I didn't notice either until my family sat me down and told me.

I came up with 3 or 4 things to say when people said "hello." Something like "what's up" or "how've you been" or "busy day?"

I made an effort to say them back at a normal volume and in a normal tone of voice.

After a year or so, it just became normal for me.

Also, Dale Carnagie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is a pretty wonderful guide to NT thought.

I have some problems remember faces. If I know someone a long time, its not a problem, but if it is someone I don't know a long time, I sometimes forget their face.
And if I meet someone the first time, I can't remember their face 1 hour after I met them. It just vanishes out of my mind.
I also always confused with names. If I'm introduced to more than one person a time, there is no chance that I remember the names.

It also happend that I met someone who told me that we went to school together some years ago, but even after some minutes talking, I have no idea who this person is.
I made that face recognizing test and I was extremely bad.

I just have to reply to this even if some of you have described it exactly like I would, because this has always been a big issue for me.

Remembering a face and a name is always an extra effort to make beside understanding and reacting to the comunication and situation, therefore I miss the name of 80% of the persons I talk with, if I dont apply a method for remembering it.

For me it is a long thinking process: If the person doesnt have a name that I can easily connect with something I know already and if there is nothing obvious significant about the person;
First I try to find the most significant thing about the person and then, I try to connect the name with something else, that for example sounds similar to it, or that starts with the same letters. Now I have a picture of the name... At last I connect the "picture" with the person in some strange phrase or story that I make up.

This works, but it is very boring and feels like waste of time on information that is not very interesting, but Ive found that I have to do it because its important for the rest of the world.

In case anybody finds this helpfull or interesting, this link leads to a set of tests that can give an indication as to whether or not someone is face-blind.

I did the "Famous Faces Test", the second on the list, and I scored a mere 45% while the average person achieves 85% recognition of the faces shown there. Not a surprise really, I am awfull at recognizing people.

I also have a problem with names, but I have learned to memorize those. I think I am coming to terms with calling people by the right name (at least when I recognize their face in the first place).

One aspect of my version the problem is that I am living in a very rural area. It's a small village where everyone knows everyone else. My parents (and everyone else) just expect me to remember the names and faces of people that have been introduced to me when I was about three years old and who I only meet at the annual village festival. I have tried asking the names of some of those people in the past, because I knew that I was seeing there faces on a somewhat regular basis, but everyone was so scandalized by my utter cluelessness that I never bothered to ask again.

I would make a VERY bad witness , It Would be kind of funny, I could get male/ female, weight and height glasses or hat. ANYthing else would be a guess!

I'm great with faces, but I'm not as good with names.

The most embarrassing thing I've ever done is to begin discussing a person while speaking to a friend of his. I was saying how great Larry was and how much I missed him and stuff, and had the friend seen him recently? The friend got a scandalized look on his face and then said, "I'M Larry!" I did not know what to do then and Larry has never spoken to me since. I guess I'm lucky I was only saying good things about him but it was a catastrophic failure nevertheless.